Thursday, July 03, 2008

It’s Official: Sharia for Britain

The Ummah Jack

Sharia has been ruled acceptable in England and Wales. The Archbishop of Canterbury was right.

Here’s what an AFP story in Al-Arabiya has to say:

Sharia could play part in England law: top judge

There are already about a dozen Sharia courts in Britain

The head of the judiciary in England and Wales said Thursday that Islamic sharia law could play a part in the legal system here.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Nicholas Phillips’s comments came after the head of the world’s Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, sparked outrage in February by saying Britain would likely adopt parts of the Islamic code.

“There is no reason why Sharia principles, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution,” Phillips said in a speech at the East London Muslim Centre.

“It must be recognized, however, that any sanctions for a failure to comply with the agreed terms of mediation would be drawn from the laws of England and Wales.”

Why am I not reassured?

Perhaps it’s because the laws of England and Wales are already not stringently enforced on Muslims, even those who are ostensibly Her Majesty’s subjects.

The article continues:
- - - - - - - - -
There are already about a dozen Sharia courts in Britain which are mainly used to resolve family disputes but they have no formal legal status.

Phillips said there could be “no question” of physical punishments like flogging and stoning being handed down.

Whew, that’s a relief!

How about forced marriages? Requiring the wearing of the hijab, hmm? What about those things?

We’ll find out.

He stressed: “So far as the law is concerned, those who live in this country are governed by English and Welsh law and subject to the jurisdiction of the English and Welsh courts.”

Williams faced calls for his resignation after saying that the adoption of some parts of Sharia law alongside the existing legal system “seems unavoidable” in some circumstances.

Phillips defended Williams on the issue, insisting his comments were “not very radical” and saying that the current system “goes a long way towards accommodating the Archbishop’s suggestion.”

Finally! Someone acknowledged that there’s an elephant in the room!

But here’s the key sentence:

“It is possible in this country for those who are entering into a contractual agreement to agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law,” the Lord Chief Justice said.

People living in England, subjects of the English sovereign, are officially being allowed to live under laws that are not the laws of England.

Surely this is only a bad dream. Time to wake up…


Hat tip: TB.

18 comments:

X said...

Well he wasn't speaking in a court and he wasn't making a ruling, so he's just pissing in the wind. If he did make a ruling you can bet it wouyld be appealed faster than you can say "allahu ackbar".

Anonymous said...

The insanity gets worse.

spackle said...

The mere fact that he would even suggest this is mind blowing. I mean if Chief supreme court justice John Roberts said something like this the ripples would be on the magnitude of a 7.0 earthquake to most everyone except the far left. I will be really curious to see the fall out from this in the next few days.

Anonymous said...

In reference to the earlier 'civil war' thread, my money is on Britain descending into anarchy first.

It's the combination of the British people still having a sliver of dignity on one hand and a completely insane, out of touch government on the other that has me thinking in terms of spontaneous combustion.

Britain really had become a bizarro world. It's out of control.

Findalis said...

The time has come for Britain to throw out those who follow Islam, close all the Mosques and declare war on Islam.

If they don't, they are lost.

Anonymous said...

All of what this judge is saying is correct on the substance. I say this as an American lawyer.

When our court systems moved to institute ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution), which includes PRIVATE processes like mediation and arbitration, the rationale was that the court, as an arm of the state, was more interested in the resolution of the dispute than in the court imposing a resolution.

Now, I happen to believe that this was a huge mistake. (Opposition to the ADR regime is across the political spectrum; liberal Harvard Law professor Owen Fiss is probably its greatest opponent). The court system should resolve disputes in front of it because the state has an interest in applying public mores through public law on disputes before it.

However, that time-tested model was tossed aside. Now, for 30 years now, litigants are seen as independant actors and the court system as a tool for the delivery of "justice services" to resolve the dispute.

What this means in practice is that if you and I sue each other on a tort claim, for example, the court doesn't care HOW we resolve the issue, so long as we resolve it and we stipulate jointly that we've resolved it and ask the court to give the resolution the power of enforcement through a legal judgment.

We could agree to a tort claim arbitration imposing the Code of Hammurabi and it would still be acceptable. And, of course, courts in the US have already long recognized Jewish family law mediators and special arbitration for Amish disputes, etc.

As for contract law, it is a fact that parties to a contract can specify which law will apply and any court having jurisdiction would then apply that law.

In short: jurisdiction is not the same as choice of law. And ADR is not a state-imposed process. And under contract law the parties can stipulate to a choice of law.

NOW, having said all that, you can see that the danger here arises from the use of ADR itself, which has transformed litigants seeking justice before a government body to litigants resolving disputes privately and then having that resolution affirmed by a government body.

It is not Sharia as such that is the danger here. It is ADR.

Whiskey said...

You can't be just a little bit pregnant or have a little bit of Sharia.

This means, essentially, a full-scale surrender by the elite on Sharia.

Sharia-desiring Muslims can kill their neighbor's dogs with impunity because dogs are unclean. Service dogs? Dead. The Blind will simply have to suffer, alone. Sharia demands it.

This WILL be a boon for organized crime, offering "protection" from Muslims that will be more effective. Britain just surrendered it's legal system, to Muslim domination and whoever can pay organized crime to stop it.

Piggy Infidel said...

I am delighted he said this, that's another few thousand BNP votes in the bag for sure

Graham Dawson (Archonix) said... you can bet it wouyld be appealed faster than you can say "allahu ackbar".

True, but that's with 3 million Muslims in the country, give it a few years til there are 5 million and those appeals will be a lot slower and a lot quieter, give it another few years til there are 10 million and you won't hear a peep; it's just a matter of time and numbers, nothing more.

So, please, bring on the calls for sharia while they are still (relatively) small in number. The more the merrier. Good job I'm not advising them , I'd tell them to shut the f*** up, keep breeding and smiling at the cameras, just a while longer lads, just a while longer.

Anonymous said...

I tend to view this as a cultural issue more than a legal one, but what if your Code of Hammurabi example conflicted with state law?

Jews and Amish have a pretty good record of co-existing and Muslims, not at all (given time).

Forfeiting this beachhead is a big mistake.

Baron Bodissey said...

KevinV --

Thanks for the clarification, and I concur with you about ADR.

But sharia is its own kind of menace, and any acceptance of it, any sort of validation, is dangerous.

It is qualitatively different from Amish practices. It cannot be shoehorned into a liberty-based society, no matter how much we distort the legal shoe trying to do it.

Anonymous said...

chalons - I agree, but you're missing the point.

When our legal systems adopted ADR, the beachhead was already forfeited. The state has ALREADY said that litigants can resolve matters as they wish, that it's not interested.

There would be no conflict between the laws..here is how it works:

1) Plaintiff sues Defendant by filing a Complaint, pursuant to the Federal or [insert state name] Rules of Civil Procedure.

2) Court dockets the case, assigns it a number, usually a judge.

3) Defendant files an Answer to the Complaint.

4) Discovery begins (collection of documents, taking of depositions, answer of interrogatories, etc.).

5) Parties agree to attempt to settle the matter through ADR. Sometimes, the court MANDATES that ADR must be tried and certify that a good-faith effort to settle the matter has been attempted.

6) ADR process: the parties negotiate. This is PRIVATE. How they choose to do it is not overseen by the court. We could agree to select a retired judge to issue a ruling, or we could agree that the Catholic priest will hear the case and give us a decision...or we could agree to take it to a Sharia expert.

7a) The parties don't settle: the case goes back on the regular track, heading for trial, under that state's law. OR

7b) The parties do settle: they then stipulate that the matter is settled and the terms. The court then issues a judgment under state or Federal law on the settlement.

What you have in the 7b case is the state ratifying a private settlement, not reaching a conclusion based on Sharia.

It's ADR that is wrong. It removed the state from dispute resolution, opening us up to this terrible practice.

Anonymous said...

Baron - That's precisely the problem with ADR. The court has delcared itself uninstersted in the quality of the mechanism by which disputes are resolved.

I completely agree that Sharia is a threat, but arguing that it shouldn't be used in ADR is handing the Muslim groups a simple victory, as they can easily point to other religious laws being used in ADR processes.

The right path to victory here is to re-establish the common law and insist that ALL matters before the court be resolved on the LAW, one law, applied equally to all before the bar.

That's the answer.

Baron Bodissey said...

KevinV --

Point taken, and I thank you. That's quite clear now, and I am in agreement.

Charlemagne said...

What a fool. If sharia is allowed to take root in Britain for addressing issues among Muslims how long will it be before it will be required for all relations between Muslims and "infidels"? It may not be legally required but the Muslims will insist on it and the cowardly Brits will acquiesce. Deport ALL Muslims now as wel as their multi-culti apologists. Why is it that it is the monied elites who both rule AND succumb to Leftist propaganda, multicultural fantasy, and Utopianism?

Anonymous said...

The right path to victory here is to re-establish the common law and insist that ALL matters before the court be resolved on the LAW, one law, applied equally to all before the bar.

Either you've never litigated a civil matter of substantial monetary value, or you're a trial lawyer. There can be huge savings in time and money if a matter is handled through binding arbitration rather than regular civil litigation. Indeed, many business transactions happen only because arbitration make the legal costs palatable.

Shlomo said...

KevinV...

Great to read a professional perspective from the states on a related issue.

I don't know about ADR, but there's certainly scope for civil artibration within the framework of magistrate's courts. It wouldn't take a giant leap, the structures are already in place, for the resolution of ALL civil proceedings for Muslim citizens to be decided under Islamic law in the UK, as long as they are intra-Muslim ones.

Unfortunately, a precedent has already been set with the rabbinical Beth Din courts which adjudicate on most intra-Jewish civil matters for observant Jews in the UK. The difference with shari'ah courts is magnitude. Beth Din Dayans govern something lie 50,000 observant Jews in the UK, whilst there are guestimated to be some 2.5 million Muslims, all subject to Shari'a law by virtue of the creed.

I regularly scour Muslim websites for counter-intel. and I came across a fatwa issued suspiciously earlier this week, detailing the primacy of shari'ah law for British Mulims:

http://www.islamic-sharia.org/worship/deeming-shariah-islamic-law-as-incompetent-2.html

To anyone familiar with Islamic doctrine, this fatwa isn't so much a revelation as a confirmation. It does however signal an open challenge to any Muslims seeking to justify abrogating 'divine' (read satan-inspired) law for the sake of community cohesion.

I have a solution, albeit a rather radical one and a somewhat tired suggestion: nuke Mecca. By destroying the Kaa'ba we undermine the legitmacy of the Islamic 'god'.

Here's to wishful thinking!

Defiant Lion said...

I've posted on here several times about Common Purpose and this incident totally reeks of it.

We have politicans telling us Islam is a religion of peace and that we need to adapt to the ways of muslims. We have the head of the Anglican church saying sharia should exist in the UK and now we have the Lord Chief Justice endorsing sharia in the UK.

Anyone unable to see this for what it really is - it is not about the promotion of Islam - needs to wake up quickly. Our whole way of life is being systematically attacked, undermined or destroyed.

"Out of chaos comes order."

OregonGuy said...

It's as if Sir Edward Coke never lived.

.